The primary aim of this study was to determine if rescue dogs differed from non-rescue dogs in several behavioural and cognitive measures. The results of the study suggest that there are differences between rescue and non-rescue dogs in some cognitive tasks, and that rescue dogs tend to display a higher level of stress-related behaviours. However, rescue dogs were expected to perform worse than controls in all four cognitive tests and this was not what was observed. While the rescue dogs performed significantly worse than control dogs in the Eye Contact test, they performed better than control dogs in the Simple Memory Test, and did not differ from non-rescues in either the Inferential Reasoning test or the Complex Memory Test. In addition, performance in some of the tests and stress behaviours displayed during the tests were significantly correlated with certain aspects of the dog’s personality and the dog’s relationship with their owner as reported in the DPQ and MDORS respectively.